I'm a single mom with seven active young children.
Every day is an adventure!

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Stony Paths

“If God sends us on
strong paths,

we are provided
strong shoes.”

-Corrie Ten Boom

I love
this quote. It is a comforting reminder
of God’s provision when the times get tough.
But the more I walk the strong and stony paths, the more I think there
might be something a little lacking in the metaphor.

If we
are provided strong shoes, then we can walk the strong paths confidently from the
beginning. Our feet are protected, and
we march into the future knowing that the Lord is giving us the strength and
comfort to carry on.

At the
beginning of any difficult path, though, most of us are beset with doubt, fear,
and pain. We walk, but it hurts. Then, gradually, with time, we find that it
hurts a little less. The stones seem
less sharp, and the obstacles seem less daunting. If we stop and think about it, though, the
path hasn’t gotten easier, we’ve just gotten stronger.

I don’t
think it’s because the Lord has given us strong shoes, I think it’s because our
bare feet, once tender and unaccustomed to the roughness, have become
Hobbit-like, leathery enough to handle the terrain. God strengthens us gradually in our
circumstances.

Have
you ever noticed that two people can react completely differently to very
similar situations? Or that one person
will be overwhelmed by a small inconvenience while another can endure great
hardship and keep moving? I’m convinced
that it’s largely a result of the toughening process of life. To those who haven’t encountered many
setbacks in life, something small like, say, car trouble, seems like a disaster
of epic proportions. For someone who is
accustomed to difficulty, the car trouble is an annoyance, nothing more.

Life
takes practice, and each trial can, if we view it as a lesson, strengthen us
and enable us to conquer great challenges, to walk stony paths with tough feet.

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About Me

I'm a proud single mommy of seven great kids. My husband died of leukemia in 2012 and this blog is the continuing story of our active young family. There's always a little chaos, a little craziness, and a lot of grace.
Email me! bainsteradventure(at)
gmail
(dot)com